Description
Book SynopsisA rigorous and many-layered study of the works of Blanchot and Adorno in terms of the relation between negativity and autonomy in the work of art with particular reference to literature, which yields a thinking of materiality in language as an ambiguous force of critique and innovation.
Trade Review"Allen makes us understand why literature matters today by showing how deeply Blanchot and Adorno have probed its most enduring riddles." -- -Jean-Michel Rabate University of Pennsylvania "Shrewdly mobilizing the tropes of negativity and autonomy that both Blanchot and Adorno develop in ways that differ from the more familiar models offered by Hegel and Heidegger (yet are inevitably indebted to them), Allen's book convincingly demonstrates how the logic of negativity allows Blanchot and Adorno to circumvent a relationship to the negative that is merely nihilistic. In terms of its style, argumentative rigor, conceptual precision, narrative patience, scholarly circumspection, and overall achievement, the book is truly outstanding." -- -Gerhard Richter Brown University
Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations 1 Abstract and Concrete Modernity The Language of the Everyday Part I: Contre-Temps 2. Autonomous Literature: The Manifesto and the Novel The Formative Drive after Kant, -- Benjamin's Historical Critique of the Novel, -- Hegel and the Ambivalence of Prose 3. The Obscurities of Artistic Innovation Blanchot on the New Music -- Adorno's Notion of Aesthetic Material Part II: Negative Spaces 4. Dead Transcendence: Blanchot, Paulhan, Kafka Transdescendence of the Writer, -- Negating Transcendence, 5. An Image of Thought in Thomas l'Obscur The Idea of Literature as Force of Repulsion -- Recapitulation: Bataille and Klossowski, 6. Indifferent Reading in Aminadab Mallarme and the Space of Writing -- Material Vision, Imaginary Space, Part III: Material Ambiguity 7. The Language-Like Quality of the Artwork Mimetic Identity and the Dialectics of Semblance -- The Form of Linguisticality in Language, 8. The Possibility of Speculative Writing Hegel, Blanchot, and the Work of Writing -- Serial Hiatus Form in Holderlin, -- Linguistic Works of Art, Part IV: Grey Literature 9. Echo Location: Beckett's Comment c'est 10. The Negativity of Thinking through Language Appendix: Thomas l'Obscur, Chapter One Notes Bibliography Index
